The Royal Opera House is now recruiting for Write an Opera 2014. The programme, a week-long residential course held in August, equips teachers with the skills, resources and inspiration to lead their students in school as they devise and stage their own opera.

‘Learning a step-wise method of creating and staging an opera sounds preposterous and impossible,’ says composer and course leader Richard Taylor. ‘Surely you'd have to be a musician, read music and, at the very least, have experience? But absolutely not! The hundreds of children of all ages who write, compose, design, act and sing in their own operas every year are proof that it really works. In the past two years alone, we've seen operas about lobster armies, stampeding zombies, warring Greek gods, and the perils of making jam.’

During the course, the teachers create an original opera, learning skills and techniques that include set design, composition and libretto writing. Participants also focus on ways to engage their own students in every aspect of devising and staging an opera, from the original text, to marketing and box office. After the course, the teachers return to school armed with the skills and resources to create an opera with their students over the academic year.

‘Write an Opera changed me and my approach to teaching forever,’ says Alison Palmer from Riverside Primary School in Rainham, Kent. ‘ It is the most exciting course I have ever attended.’

The programme, which is led by a team of professional artists with extensive arts educational experience, takes place from 9 to 16 August 2014 at Bryanston School, Dorset. The school, set in 400 acres of fields and gardens, is equipped with state-of-the-art facilities making it ideal for a week of creative learning and inspiration. The processes learnt can be adapted to suit the school and student’s needs; in the past operas have been successfully created in Primary, Secondary and Special schools across the UK.

Three years ago, I read about the Fanfare Competition in a national newspaper. Budding composers were being encouraged to write orchestral fanfares for the Royal Opera House and the prize was for the winning entries to be recorded by the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House, under the directorship of Antonio Pappano. Not only that, but the winning fanfares were to be played during the performance intervals over the course of the following Season. I knew that our pupils would be excited by this amazing competition, but I was not fully prepared for their energy and their highly creative musical compositions.

We are a relatively small state middle school, with just under 250 pupils. I encouraged pupils to work in pairs, and the teaching staff also provided workshops in lunchtimes.

Over the past three years, we've submitted well over a hundred entries, with a few winners along the way. What followed for them was something that few young composers will have ever experienced, with our pupils accorded red carpet treatment from the moment they were chosen. Fantastically, winning doesn't seem to be the sole motivation for pupils entering. Last year we didn't manage a winning entry but this hasn’t put the current students off - I have already had a lot asking me when we are going to start writing them again. A key aspect of education is to motivate and inspire pupils and this is something that Fanfare does brilliantly!

I teach composition, through writing fanfares, to both Year 7 and Year 8 in the term after Christmas. The first three lessons are spent learning about fanfares and experimenting with compositional techniques. In the next few lessons, students come up with as many ideas and motifs as they can, and following lessons are spent refining ideas, working on structure and orchestrating on the whiteboard with the use of Sibelius.

Music is positive in our school – we sing in class and assemblies, provide orchestra, clarinet group, recorder groups, theory classes and instrumental lessons and there are numerous chances for our pupils to perform. And, thanks to Fanfare, some of our pupils can say that their music has been played to thousands of people and that they have worked with an internationally acclaimed orchestra and conductor. How inspiring is that?